Redcap.org has been offered as a place to store the materials.
I am currently trying to design a generic covenant and library. I am having more trouble than I expected when thinking about this. Roots (and equivalent texts) cost more than 300 build points, for starters...
I would suggest that the covenant and areas used are not bound to a specific tribunal or setting, and that no specific location/name is used in this work.
What I suggest is to start by describing one or several basic areas in detail :
-A peasant's hamlet
-A range of hills, with their activity ; the castle of the robber baron that lives there, or maybe the rivalry between two families
-A forest, its notable outlaw groups and their interactions ; a crossing in the forest and the faerie market that
-A small town with no specific details
-A small harbour town
etc.
The idea would be to name and describe the notable local people (so that NPCs don't end up with names like Mr Lay's, mrs coca and Cheddar the innkeeper - and players suspiciously looking at the dinner table), potential interactions between the locals and the grogs/companions/magi
In a second part, we could describe one-shot scenarios using this setting. The idea is that I always have a long backlog of ideas of things to do in the main story arc. The problem I usually have with my players is when comes wednesday evening, and I didn't have time to prepare something. That's usually when I go to some website to find a filler scenario, and I must say ArM doesn't have many of these.
I will sign up for one hamlet to start with.
My problem with Redcap.org is that it is clearly labelled as a gaming site, so it is blocked at most places I work from. So I cannot use it to jot down notes or make a quick edit during the day. Note that exporting/importing pages between wikis is fairly easy to do, so if we decide to go with another wiki paltform for the development phase, it will be easy to port the final result to redcap (if we want to do so).
Few covenants would have roots for all Arts, and certainly not starting covenants. They may have a handful of them, mostly in Arts where the founding members were weak at the time, with higher-level (but lower-quality) works in those areas of specialties. Or maybe just tractatus for those Arts that they were great at.
But I think if you go into build points right from the start, I think you are taking the problem backwards. Like a character, a covenant should start from a concept and then filled out. The "why"s are as important, if not more, than the "what"s. So if the covenant has a great library, with roots in all Arts, why is that so? Did they have to get into heavy debt for those books? Are they setting up as a covenant set yp to receive wandering magi who want to study for a few seasons? Did they have to sacrifice space for labs in order to get such a vast library?
Although this is a fair point, I think that completely cutting out the covenant(s) from a specific location results in a big loss of colour and inspiration. I like to start from the location and build based on local tidbits of myths, legends and local features. I tend to find generic locations bland and uninteresting.
But that is not to say that those would not be useful. And a covenant designed with a specific location in mind can have a chapter describing how it can be uprooted and moved to a similar location. So both approaches are valid IMHO.
I tend to agree with those posters that mentioned that a collection of covenants may, in the end, be more useful than a single one. Magi of Hermes is a good analogy. Perhaps each participant should be the primary designer of a covenant, and contribute to other contributors' covenants?
Anyway, I'll start writing down notes about my ideas.
On the other hand, designing the book for a specific setting would make it less interesting for many people that don't plan to play in this setting, and the work made to make the covenant "local flavour" would be time wasted for most of the users.
If we want to implement this later on, or if we want, we could work in layers :
-------Raw area
-Design generic places, people and relations between people
-Design generic scenarios/storylines that can be used in any setting (after all, a love story in Tuscany is probably not very different from a love story in Shropshire)
-------Locating the area
-Locate this generic setting in a specific geographic area, connecting existing people from step 1with political factions, etc.
-Create a new set of new scenarios/storylines that may be interconnected with the generic set of scenarios/storylines.
-------Implementing a time line
-Define how the area evolves depending on the actions of players and the outcome of the storylines : This would lead to the creation of a campaign book.
Not to be contrarian, but since the objective is to provide a ready-made covenant to newcomers, having them not interested in playing in that setting is not so problematic. Those experienced with Ars would have less difficulty in relocating the covenant than newcomers would have in rooting it in a specific locale. I agree that things should still be kept relatively generic, so as to make it easy to reuse the covenant in a wide variety of settings.
Ok. Lets go with the 3-5 fovenants structure. Think that can work 
time to start thinking!
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There's lots of sites which provide free wiki software which you could use to develop or host the project. We use wikidot.com to host our saga.
Personally, I use Referata. The availability of the Semantic package provides some very nifty features.
This looks like a good start.
IME adding a few casting tablets for those Intellego spells needed often - like The Inexorable Search, Piercing the .. Veil, Sense of the Lingering Magic - to the library helps beginning characters a lot.
Cheers
Ok, then I will go for the "standard design", then of 4 magi + 2 NPC + 6 warriors + 12 covenfolk in a less isolated location (near Chester). 850 build points or so. More mundanely integrated.
Manor (or tower) near a ford in the river dee that they are charged to protect from welsh raiders. They are charged to protect it because the welsh raiders have used supernatural abilities from time to time, and so they were granted the lands in exchange for acting as a bulwark. Interference? Depends on your saga's call. The land belongs to a monastery.
Aura 3-4, low level books in most areas (level 5-9) and superior NPC that are out or unavailable most of the time after the first adventures: they are seekers, and they research is taking them abroad most of the time. Manor house defensive features. Only one mystical tower in a manor house.
The magi have been recruited by the founders to take care of the local problems, since they cannot be around to fulfil their contract obligations. Minor items already in place in the covenant. I will define the spells less than Timothy, but will include more urban links in Chester.
Here come the 2 first installments of Lumen Praeterito (Light of the past), an early summer covenant in Chesterhire.
tira1d6.wordpress.com/sample-covenant-arm5/
tira1d6.wordpress.com/sample-cov ... -elements/
Just setting the basic bones right now, but you see where I am heading: more vanilla than that is difficult :mrgreen:
Cheers,
Xavi
Well, a conceptual post. I changed the name of the covenant as well given that this is an exercise.
tira1d6.wordpress.com/2013/11/05 ... gnconcept/
Timothy and I are doing these related projects. Anyone else? So far both are early summer covenants. A winter or autumn covenant could be really cool.
The introduction page for the covenant of Wiggon's Kiln has been set up. I am using the wiki format, but for now only that single page is up.
The covenant is in West Sussex, between the rivers Arun and Stor, along a Roman road leading to London. So it is quite close to mundanes, and struggled for years to avoid accusations of interfering with them.
Haven't decided yet what season the covenant will be in. I was initially thinking late Spring, but it might be challenging to do a Winter covenant instead. Perhaps this will be a covenant that suffered premature Winter after the death/disappearance/departure of most of its founders. I'll see where the story leads me! 
I'd be up for a group project of setting up a covenant, mapping out some adventure threads over the decades... Or is everyone just doing their own project now?
The final idea seemed to be to build up 4-6 different covenants in order to have different options. Once the basic parameters are in place, we will comment (and accept comments) on everyone's design So, if this was a book it would be a book on potential covenants, all stated up and with enough material to make them your PC covenant, or your enemy, or a contact, or whatever.
First part of the community is up: the covenfolk. Tomorrow the specialists.
Kilgs, I am sure we all would appreciate you adding to the project, either as another covenant or adding to the ones that are being sketched.
The general history of Wiggon's Kiln has been written. I have decided to indeed make this a Winter covenant.
As it will be a central feature of the covenant, I spent some time researching kilns and pottery.
Casting tablets and enchanted items added. My next step is statting up the companions. I've kept to the vanilla themes idea, so the magic items are obvious ones you have seen before. This means new players won't need to make them from scratch.